


VOLTRON: Automata

by thecouchwitch



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game), Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Amnesia, Crossover, If I continue, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, SHEITH - Freeform, pidge and matt are just lil robots rn but they'll get more personality as the story goes, probably some robot sex in a later chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-20 01:29:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10652169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecouchwitch/pseuds/thecouchwitch
Summary: Unit 2B: Keith and Unit 9S: Shiro have known eachother for as long as the two of them can remember. For Keith, that's decades. For Shiro, that's about two minutes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I love N:A and I love Sheith so I wrote this. This basically starts out identically to the game and it hits a lot of the same plot points, so it WILL spoil the game for you, but there will be heavy diverges. I mixed up a lot of the lore too to make things fit together, for example giving the androids names along with numbers.
> 
> VOLTRON is the military organisation headed by humans that the androids fight for.  
> Robots sent by an alien race called the Galra currently dominate the earth, humanity has fled to the moon and send androids to fight the robots.  
> Types of androids are things like strength and agility models, numbers/letters refer to the exact series within the types, names refer to the individuals within the series, for example there are multiple 2Bs but only one 2B Keith, but there might be say a H7 Keith that is not necessarily an agility model.
> 
> How far this AU goes depends on personal motivation and audience response.

 

 

-

 

 

The skies stretch before Keith as far as the eye can see, naught but a grey canvas atop fluffy grey clouds that were equal parts precipitation and pollution. The roar of lion engines has been his sole company for several hours now, bar occasional breaks of radio silence when someone from Command issues a new order or asks from an update. One such order comes through just as Keith starts wondering where it is, and following the familiar ring of an incoming message, Operator Coran announces himself needlessly, his unusual accent and nasally tone more than enough identification.  
  


“This is Operator 6O: Coran at Command. VOLTRON squadron, come in.”  
  


“2B: Keith here,” Keith answers on autopilot, literally, “All units have penetrated the stratosphere. Autopilot systems green across the board.”  
  


“Great!” Coran answers lightly. He always is a bit too casual on the radio, treating mission briefs like a friendly chat rather than the serious tide-turners that they are. A light for each of the six jets in the formation lights up the dashboard, and a light ringing noise is heard across the comm. “All units confirmed on our end too. Hope entry wasn't too bumpy for you, good thing androids don't eat, right?”  
  


Keith ignores the attempt at conversation and checks the navpoint on his monitor. “We've passed the fifty-kilometre threshold and we're heading towards the target.”  
  


“Right! Once you reach their anti-air defences, get into manual attack formation, then destroy the Goliath class unit and gather what data you can.”  
  


“Understood-”  
 

The clouds below part, but not by natural means. A red and orange laser beam pierces the grey gloom without warning, completely obliterating one of the jets in the formation in less than a second. The screams of the pilot echo across the comm, then dissolve into static before cutting out completely. The remaining jets skirt out of the path of the laser that has already vanished. Keith gets back on the comm to not only Coran, but the rest of the squadron. His voice is effortlessly steady and stoic; he's done this a thousand times.  
 

“12H Down. All units, activate manual mode and rely on visuals to evade, they know we're here.”  
  


His fellow soldiers obey and break formation. It's sooner than planned, already the mission is deviating from the strategy, deviation is expected, but the sooner it happens, the worse a mission tends to go. There's fog and cloud blocking their view, and whatever is shooting at them is capable of staying under radar.  
  


“Origin point of long range laser confirmed,” the squadron navigator announces, but Keith knows that means nothing. It tells them where the enemy was, not where it is. Sure enough, barely a moment later, the laser comes at them again, this time from a totally different origin point. The navigator dies in much the same way as 12H did.  
 

“11B Down,” Keith announces, “our Ho229 Cancellers are ineffective.”  
  


Hiding's not working. The plan isn't working. Time to go off-script. Keith plunges his jet down through the clouds and the ocean comes into view, bluer and clearer than the last time he saw it. In the near distance, “land” is visible, great rusting metal structures that mar the Earth's surface like a cancer. Before it, the first signs of the enemy can be seen, anti-air cannons on hovering platforms manned by mindless identical robots, beings without compassion nor the ability to hesitate, their barrels all pointed directly at the approaching android squadron The remaining jets join Keith below the clouds and fly beside him, prompting Keith to request permission to engage.  
  


Command grants it. But as soon as they start firing on the guns, the guns fire back. The laser snipes another craft right out of the sky. 1D announces that 7E is down, and then not seconds later Keith announces that 1D is down. He's a little less calm now. “Multiple surrounding air units confirmed, assuming mobile configuration!”  
  


Fighting the robots they can see is all they can do, since whatever is pointing that laser at them is still out of range. Keith and his remaining companion swerve wildly as they fire on the enemy units, wiping all of them out in a matter of moments with little damage to themselves, but then that fucking laser from nowhere hits again. Keith manages to keep his voice from breaking as he announces that he's alone.  
  


“2B: Keith to Operator 6O: Coran, all... all allied units down. The operation is compromised, awaiting further orders.”  
  


Ruins are seen dotting the ocean below him more clearly now, remains of oil rigs and buildings and factories that humans would have once worked and lived in. The ocean is higher than it was back then, some of the ruins look like the tops of skyscrapers.  
  


Coran's voice breaks a bit when he responds to Keith's plea after deliberating off-comm with his fellows at Command; he's never been good with this side of the job, at least compared to other Operatives Keith has worked under. “O-Operator to Unit 2B: Keith, we need you to meet up with a Unit 9S on the ground and begin covertly gathering data on local terrain.”  
  


A new navpoint pings itself into existence on Keith's dashboard.

  
“Understood.”  
  


Not even Keith could take on whatever is manning that invisible laser by himself. He switches his lion from fighter mode to movement mode and speeds towards the clustered metal structures that counted as “ground”, zig-zagging to dodge any laser blasts that might come searching for him, but none do. He reaches the cluster and flies in amongst them, turning his lion 90 degrees to fit in the tight entrance. What appears to be many building outside is in reality only one below the surface, all joined together by an inter-connecting labyrinth that weaves all around the island made of metal. It's a robot production factory, not one of the biggest, but certainly big enough to let Goliath class units walk about freely in some spaces.  
  


Naturally, there are enemies inside as well as outside. Keith is soon beset with attacks from the inhabitants, and dodging gunfire and (thankfully less lethal) lasers is even more difficult in this tight space. He takes some out, flees from most. His lion is taking a beating, not that he can do much but hope it holds out.  
  


It doesn't.  
  


He hits a wall. The wall smashes apart, but so does his lion. Multiple system failure alerts sing into his ears, alerting him of things he already knows as he tumbles down to the ground amidst the debris of his former vehicle, and with quick reflexes he manages to land crouched on his feet in the middle of a giant metal arena. His programming tells him he's in pain. How similar it is to a humans pain, he'll never know.  
  


Keith stands carefully. His formfitting black clothes have some tears, his skin as some scratches which reveal small glimpses of the electronics underneath, and his programming _really_ wants him to repair something in his left ankle, but he's not concerned about any of those details as long as he can still hold his sword, which he was smart enough to have strapped to his back while inside the lion.  
  


He unsheathes the blade and turns to his makeshift entryway. The robots are swarming through it like a disturbed ants nest. An idiom he once read in a book.  
  


“Alert:” the automated voice of his PIDGE unit, a small hovering machine with a feminine robotic voice, loaded with data on the mission, unhelpfully announces as she unearths herself from the wreckage and flies to Keith's side, “Multiple large enemies detected.”  
  


“I'm aware of that!” He snaps in irritation as he leaps at his foes. He makes short work of the group that followed him, but the factory is alive and it hates him. More enemies drop down into the arena like they were waiting on him, and he barely has time to catch his breath. These ones have lasers, ones he can't afford to be hit by, and he dodges and rolls his way through the blasts and cuts down their wielders with cold-blooded precision.  
  


“Enemies destroyed,” his PIDGE unit announces. As if waiting for the perfect comedic cue, the arena shakes and crumbles. Not quite, Keith thinks bitterly, as a massive chainsaw-like device crashes through the side of the arena. He barely misses being torn apart by the blades. The chainsaw is attached to a massive crane, and the operator of said crane appears not to exist. A Goliath?  
  


“Is that our target?!”  
  


“Negative,” PIDGE answers, “This enemy is unrelated. You should probably dispatch it anyway.”  
  


“You don't say?” Keith has to keep his eyes from rolling as he jumps out of the way of the new enemy. He doesn't exactly have a lot of confidence in his ability to fight a giant robot hand the size of a building on foot, though. Keith can hit pretty hard for an android his size, but not THAT hard.  
  


He's not about to roll over and die though. He dodges the chainsaw, cuts it with his blade where he can, and does little more than irritate his massive mechanical opponent, but then good fortune in the form of 17 missiles strikes. The opponent is blown to oblivion, and its remains scatter to the ground in a rain of fire and metal. The source of the missiles flies into view, a lion occupied by Unit 9S: Shiro, who smiles in relief.  
  


“Call me in next time,” Shiro chides. “That was dangerous, sir.”  
  


He lands his lion on the ground and unhooks from it. He's taller than Keith, broader and stronger. His line was built for hand-to-hand squabbles and ground re-con, unlike Keith, who was built small and slim to fly through the air with ease. His hair is black, like Keith’s; their lines were both physically modelled on a group of people called the Japanese who once inhabited a number of islands near the Pacific Ocean.  
  


“Comms were down,” Keith looks away from his saviour. “Thanks for the assist.”  
  


“I'm Unit 9S: Shiro, I'm your support.”  
  


Keith knows who he is. “Copy that.”  
  


“So, what was that buzz-saw thing? Any chance that was the Goliath you were sent to take down?”  
  


“No, a defence system. PIDGE says the Goliath is somewhere nearby but she can't give me specifics.”  
  


“She?” Shiro tilts his head at the robot floating beside Keith quietly. A pyramid-shaped pod bot with no discernible features beyond a large glowing eye in the centre. Robots programmed to have a gender were usually built to resemble said gender as it popularly appeared among humans. Keith shrugs.  
  


“She feels like a girl to me.”  
  


“...Well, can't argue with that. I've got a lion still, so you should continue on foot and I'll check the perimeter from the skies. I have my MATT pod with me, I'll set up a local connection between him and PIDGE so we can talk with comms down.”  
  


“Him?”  
  


“He feels like a boy to me.”  
  


“Can't argue with that.”  
  


Shiro smiles again, and Keith doesn't, but he can't help but feel some of the tightness in his chest decrease for the first time since the doomed mission began. Dangerous.  
  


MATT detaches himself from Shiro's lion and the two androids interface their pods together, setting up a working connection quickly. It's weak and full of background static, but it'll function. They can't expect better with all the radio jamming equipment that the robots seem to have set up. Shiro gets back in his lion and leaves. Keith watches him until he's out of sight, then begins exploring the rest of the factory.  
  


He's met with little resistance. It seems the fights on the way in exhausted much of the factory's supply of battle-ready units, at least for the moment, but robots breed like rabbits, as the humans might say. Occasionally, Shiro checks in on their connection, either to give Keith updates on his own progress or to ask how Keith is doing. Shiro is from a newer, more modern and high-tech line of androids. Emotions and expressing himself comes easier to him than it does to Keith. Much closer to human capabilities.  
  


Keith traverses the rusted metal landscape, climbing over bridges and girders, cutting down any robots he meets along the way. The blade of his sword cuts stronger than diamonds, so in small numbers weaker enemy units pose no trouble to him at all. His ankle is still bothering him however, making his jumps and kicks harder to execute and sending alarms up his nerves with every movement, and there's a sickening crunch here and there that might make him sick if he had a stomach.  
  


The more time he spends not knowing where the Goliath unit is, the more nervous he becomes. PIDGE still can't pick anything useful up on her scanners, and he can't help but snap at her when she directs him inside a building and the door slams shut behind him.  
  


“Exit locked,” she states, but Keith already predicted that.  
  


“Open it then!”  
  


“Working as fast as I can.”  
  


Robots seem to materialise from out of the walls. Keith dispatches them quick, but they're tough, and he gets a few new minor cuts and bruises for his trouble. The factory is replenishing itself. PIDGE finally opens the door, and Shiro voice crackles through the connection on Keith's comm device.  
  


“Everything okay down there? I heard gunfire.”  
  


“Yeah, if I die I'll tell you.”  
  


“Just be careful, okay? Call me in if you get into trouble, I'm literally finding nothing out here so it's not like I'm busy.”  
  


Keith's ankle isn't getting any better with him still fighting. He can auto-repair, but he needs to stop and wait, or the damage will only continue to get worse. He doesn't want to ask for help, doesn't want to be alone with Shiro for too long, but...  
  


“Can you find any calm spots to rest? I gotta make some repairs.”  
  


“Roger, sending you a navpoint now. Meet you there?”  
  


“...Sure. Thanks.”  
  


Up over a structure, into a tunnel, through a forest of free-standing metal beams, Keith emerges on the other side of the factory. He can see land in the distance from here, real land, empty buildings and ancient roads scattered with the skeletal husks of abandoned cars, too irradiated from the bombings to be scavenged by the robots. There's plant life too, overgrown grass and green vines filling the cracks in cement and covering the sides of buildings, and....  
  


“Are those... birds?”  
  


“Amazing, isn't it?” The noise of Shiro's lion touching down alerts Keith of his presence. “Even with the robots in the area the wildlife is still coming back faster than predicted.”  
  


Keith doesn't look at him right away, too awestruck by the first flesh and blood creatures he's ever seen in his decades of sentience, and he only turns away when the flock of sparrows vanish over the horizon. Shiro is smiling. Keith can picture the way his eyes must look beneath his blindfold, sparkling and crinkled, full of far too much warmth for such a metallic and hard colour. 9S units are just as hard to tear your gaze from as birds, but Keith manages to look away and take a seat on a comfortable looking piece of scrap metal. He removes a boot and feels his ankle, wincing as the nerves send pain signals to his brain. PIDGE floats above the damaged limb and scans it, quickly diagnosing it with petty bullshit like disconnected ball joints, cracked bones, and muscle tearing. Shiro's smile turns to a frown of concern.  
  


“That looks bad. Are you sure it can auto-repair?”  
  


“I've auto-repaired worse.” He could be damaged more easily than many units, but his auto-repair function more than made up for it most of the time  
  


Shiro snorts and sits beside him. “You Agility units are kind of a force of nature, aren't you?”  
  


Keith shrugs. He used to be surprised Shiro thought that, since Strength units had the brute force of about ten Agility models. But of course, Shiro doesn't remember they've had this exact conversation before at least three times. He doesn't even remember meeting before. He never remembers. Keith finishes the conversation for him. “You're jealous, right? Because Agility Units get sent out in Squadrons, while Strength Units are hardy enough to be sent out alone.”  
  


“...I, yeah, exactly. I miss the company you know? Someone to talk to.”  
  


“You're on a mission, you shouldn't worry about things like that.”  
  


Keith can feel his ankle coming back right. His flesh is knitting back together beneath his skin, his joints are sliding back into place, and it's uncomfortable. Androids have to have pain, according to their creators, it lets them know they're damaged, but in Keith's experience it's just another example of the humans inflicting their own suffering upon him. Shiro's staring at him, Keith can feel those eyes on him through that dark blindfold.  
  


Keith grimaces as a particularly sensitive joint clicks back into place. Shiro reaches out and grabs Keith's hand. Keith looks up at him in surprise through his own blindfold. Shiro gives a sheepish smile. “Squeeze me, it'll make it hurt less.”  
  


Fuck this guy for being so nice. He can't keep doing this. Keith is weak though, and he holds Shiro's hand as tightly as he's able until the repairs finish. Shiro holds back, his grip firm, gentle words of encouragement on his lips every time Keith's face contorts.  
  


Finally, it's done. Keith savours Shiro's hand in his for a few moments more before shaking it off and standing, unsheathing his blade as he does. Shiro follows.  
  


“Let's go. PIDGE?”  
  


“No sign of movement on my scanners.”  
  


“Don't you have anything useful to say?”  
  


“Negative.”  
  


“I like her,” Shiro comments. Keith rolls his eyes and marches back into the factory. Shiro gets back into his lion and follows from the air.

 

 

-

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as you can see the plot has now diverged from the game and now I'm writing from my heart! So is there anything you guys wanna see in this fic? Please talk to me, ask me stuff, make requests and suggestions, I love discussing works in progress, and I don't bite. It can be a bit disheartening to feel like no one is reading after all.
> 
> By the way, like YoRHa, VOLTRON soldiers all wear black gothy looking clothes. Shiro has a grey blouse and a waistcoat over tight black pants, I'm undecided on how Keith is dressed but he has a crop jacket as usual. Maybe he wears a tight pants version of 9s' outfit? Gotta show off their charm points.
> 
> Also here's some terminology.  
> B Unit: Battle unit, all purpose fighter types, they're small and fast and deadly in groups.  
> S Unit: Strength Unit. In the game S Units are Scanner units, but I wanted to keep Shiro named 9s, so I changed it to strength. Their name is self explanatory, the'r model favours strength, endurance, and raw power over speed, they tend to operate alone or in small 2-3 man groups as support.  
> O Unit: Operator Units. They live in the android base between the moon and earth, they relay missions between command and the androids on the ground, they're the voice on the radio, and they're all about collecting data.  
> Commander Unit: No letter, there's only one, and it's Allura. She's in charge of the androids, she gives out orders, and her authority is second only to the humans who built the androids.  
> A Unit: Attack unit. Specialise in weaponry and assassinations of specific targets, they work alone. Expensive to manufacture.  
> Lion: Mechanical flight suit, in the game they were called flight suits and kinda resemble small mechas, they have the same concept here but are built to have kind of lion-esque head covers. They can shoot missiles that pack a punch, also expensive to manufacture.  
> Pod: Little robots that feed data of their surroundings to the android, either verbally or through their blindfold. Also act as a radio for communications between operators and other pods.  
> Blindfold: Appears to outsiders as thick black cloth covers androids eyes, it's actually a combat visor made out of super flexible material, androids wearing them can see through them like google glasses.

-

Fighting robots, walking in circles, fighting robots, walking in circles. PIDGE and MATT can't find the Goliath on their scanners. Keith searches the surface of the factory, checking the insides while Shiro provides air support. Keith is getting more and more anxious; Goliath robots are massive, the size of a building, so even if it was able to jam their equipment there is no way it would be able to hide from sight. He begins to wonder if it's a trap, or some kind of distraction, when the metal beneath his feet begins shaking.

His first thought is that it's an earthquake. He's never experienced one, but he knows all about them. Then the factory splits in half, and one half stands up out of the ocean, metal joins grinding, flotsam and jetsam falling away and creating mini tsunamis that splash onto the dock of the part of the factory that hasn't sprung to life. Structures like arms split away from the main bulk, and two bright red eyes blink open on the top of what once had been a cooling tower. Goliath robots are being built bigger now, it seems. A loud mechanical roar from the vague direction of its head makes Keith's ears ring.

“Shiro!” Keith doesn't stand around to gawk, he just starts running in the opposite direction. “I found it, it's part of the factory! Get back here!”

“I see it!” Shiro yells back, “On my way, don't try to engage!”

“Don't think I have a choice!” Keith responds as a massive metal fist comes down on top of him. Keith manages to dodge out of the way, but barely; it's slow moving, but something that big doesn't need to be fast. With a few leaps and a flip, Keith parkours up a wall and back onto the robot fist that has demolished the area he had just been standing in, and he stabs down into the skeletal inner workings of its wrist. The Goliath howls in what could be mistaken for pain and tries to shake him off, but Keith has already dodged out of the way.

“PIDGE, scan for weaknesses!”

“Already scanning,” PIDGE answers with a raised voice; she's struggling to be heard over the racket, and to keep up with Keith as he prints ahead of their pursuer, who is tearing up parts of the factory and throwing them away in order to follow. “I've located a neural load in its left arm!”

“Can you hack it?!”

“Multiple firewalls detected, estimated wireless hacking completion in sixteen minutes, fifty-two seconds!”

The fist comes down again. Keith escapes again, but he's unable to get to high ground, and as the floor beneath him is punched into the sea he's thrown forward several dozen feet. He scrambles to get upright again, ignoring the taste of blood in his mouth, and he fears he might be too slow to get out of the way of the next blow, but then Shiro flies in like a knight in shining armour and hits it right in the face with a barrage of missiles. It doesn't cause a Goliath of that size much damage, but it's enough of a distraction for it to stumble back so Keith can get to his feet.

“You okay buddy?!” Shiro yells over the comm. If Keith had the time he might have felt something inside him twinge upon hearing him talk to him like that.

“I'm fine!” Keith responds shortly, “PIDGE is hacking it, we need to buy her time!”

“Keith, we only have one lion! We need to retreat!”

“How?! I can't fight my way back to land with that thing chasing me!”

“Grab on to my lion's back!”

“At the speed you'd need to reach to outfly the enemy, I'd be ripped right off!”

The Goliath is moving again, having collected itself again after Shiro's annoyance. Shiro flies in close again and hits it with another barrage. The Goliath bellows angrily and tries to swat Shiro out of the sky like a fly, and Shiro zooms out of the way. Keith takes the opportunity to run, but instead of away from the enemy, he runs towards it. He jumps forward into the robot's torso and clings to a part of it that resembles railing of some kind.

“PIDGE, we don't have fifteen minutes! If I plug you directly into the neural lode can you hack it faster?”

“Affirmative! Estimated direct interface hacking completion, seventeen seconds!”

“I'll take it!” Keith begins climbing up the front of the Goliath. There's a lot of nooks and crannies in the metal that he can grab onto, but the force of the beast’s movement makes it hard to get a stable hold. Shiro calls out to him in a panic.

“Keith, get off that thing!”

“It's our only option! You're almost out of missiles now, aren't you?! Fire them now and get out of reach before it grabs you!”

“Dammit, I'm not leaving you!”

Fuck this guy. He doesn't even know who Keith is. He thinks they just met a few hours ago, right? Who gets emotionally attached like that? No time to dwell on it either way. Shiro has the Goliath distracted with a game of tag for now, but there's no way it doesn't realise where Keith is. At any moment, it can decide to change priorities, grab Keith, and squeeze him and until his bones crush and his guts fall out.

Up Keith climbs, and then across. Through some miracle, he makes it to the left arm without falling, with PIDGE floating closely beside his head.

“Lift up the white panel below you,” she says. Keith drops down onto a narrow metal spike sticking out of the arm like a platform and opens the panel his pod indicated. A tiny panel on PIDGE’s own body opens up, and out flies a prehensile green USB cord that sticks right into the uncovered access point.

The Goliath switches priorities. It roars and turns its gaze away from Shiro to get the saboteurs in its visuals, then slowly raises its left arm to smack them away. Shiro fires the last of his missles into his face, hoping to knock it off balance again or at least draw its attention away, but the robot refuses to be tricked with its neural lode in danger.

It starts swinging.

Keith braces for the impact as if it will hurt less.

Shiro is having none of it.  
Something else hits the robot this time, it’s not ammo, but a lion. Shiro crashes right into the enemy's chest, boring a hole through it that makes it stumble to its knees. Keith is soaked by a wave that crashes over his head, but the displaced water recedes, and he manages to hang on.

“Shiro!” he yells. No answer. He calls out again, and there's no answer.

No. No no no no no.

Not again.

“Hacking complete.” PIDGE announces. “Enemy jamming signals disabled. Connection to VOLTRON database restored. Reinforcements on their way.”

The USB cord unplugs itself and coils back into PIDGE’s body, and the Goliath just... stops. It freezes mid-swing, posed like a statue, and its eyes go dim. The only sign of life it displays are the sparks and flames coming from the lion-made hole in its torso.

“Scan for vitals!” He snaps at PIDGE more harshly than he needs to. She almost seems to visibly wince in the air.

“Black box signal of Unit 9s: Shiro detected, but growing weak. Heavy damage sustained to both hardware and software. Connection to database severed.”

“And MATT?”

“MATT is heavily damaged but intact, connection to database severed.”

“I'm going in,” Keith announces and climbs towards the gaping wound. PIDGE says something about it being inadvisable, electrical fires and structural damage, blah blah blah, but he obviously doesn't care. If both an android and its pod are disconnected, the android's personality can't be uploaded to a new body. If its body dies, its personality dies. He's not letting that happen.

He spiders down the torso of the Goliath and carefully climbs into the hole. The lion has made a complete mess of its insides, fires have broken out that have filled the cavity with smoke, loose and broken wires are sparking dangerously, and the lion itself lies in pieces, much like Keith's own from earlier in the day. The walls are groaning from the effort of holding up with much of the supports smashed, as PIDGE tries to tell him they aren't likely to stay standing for long.

“Shiro!” Keith calls. He wants to rush, but he can't risk bringing the place down just yet. Either Shiro doesn't answer, or his voice is too weak to be heard. “PIDGE, give me an origin point for Shiro's vitals!”

“Shiro's black box signal is coming from thirty feet in front of us.”

A navpoint appears in front of Keith's eyes. His blindfold, black and vision-blocking to the outside world, is a transparent computer screen to him, and with PIDGE reconnected to the VOTRON database all sorts of feedback is flashing in front of him again. Area temperature, area levels, sound waves, and the like. Keith rushes now. Shiro isn't in immediate view, the navpoint sits atop a nest of wires, broken fuel lines, and blinking lights. Keith cuts them away with his sword, shoving them aside to reveal the mangled android them. Shiro's flesh is bloody and burned, and his face has been torn away by the crash, revealing the grey metallic skull beneath it, but Keith has no time to react.

“Is he conscious?” he asks PIDGE.

“Negative.”

“Good.”

With some effort, he lifts Shiro up and slings him across his narrow shoulders. Shiro's left arm flops wetly to the floor in a splash of blood; it's been severed, and it had only been holding on thanks to some shredded muscle strands and the remains of Shiro's waistcoat. Keith doesn't stop to pick it up, it's less weight to lug around. He can't be careful, can't be squeamish, the readings behind his blindfold are becoming more alarming with every second.

Slower than he'd like, Keith heaves Shiro towards the exit. The cavity around them is groaning, and flames lick at Keith's feet, reminding him to hurry it up or face the same fate as his companion. Somehow, he reaches the opening, and drops down heavily onto a platform placed a dozen feet below them. It's too far a jump with someone of Shiro's mass on top of him, and his knees buckle beneath him. He lets Shiro slip off his shoulders and then flops down beside him, hurting and tired. Black smoke is billowing out of where they came from, spiralling up into the sky, and he allows himself a few seconds to watch it before sitting up again.

“Any news on the reinforcements?”

“The operator that responded to my distress call said they would arrive at our location in approximately two hours, there aren't any other Units in the area.”

“Great...” Keith huffs bitterly. He turns to look at down at Shiro's mutilated form. What a wreck. Keith's seen worse, but seeing Shiro of all people like that makes his non-existent stomach turn. His arm is still bleeding. His auto-repair functions must be damaged too, even severed limbs like that would have self-cauterized by now.

“You'll be okay,” Keith murmurs quietly. He takes off his jacket and bandages Shiro's bloody stump with it. “We'll get you a new body, and you'll be good as new.”

“Detecting serious memory damage,” a new voice announces. Keith looks up. It's MATT, floating beside PIDGE, bearing a few scratches and a missing side panel, but otherwise fine. That's a relief, Shiro always tended to get weirdly attached to his pods.

“What do you mean memory damage?” Keith asks, a small degree of impatience in his voice. The day wasn't over so of course God was still thinking up ways to shit on him

“Unit 9s: Shiro crashed directly into a neural lode and become entangled with the machinery. His memory banks were corrupted when Pod Unit PIDGE disabled the Goliath.”

“What?!” Keith cries, leaping to his feet. PIDGE and MATT seem to recoil slightly at his outburst. “How is his memory corrupted, does he have a virus or something?!”

“Full diagnostic cannot be performed until database connection is restored and Unit 9s can receive maintenance.”

“FUCK!” Keith angrily kicks at a piece of rubble off the platform. It sails out over the sea and lands in the water with a far-off splash. “I just wanted to turn the fucking thing off! He... He wanted to save me and now...!”

“Hacking was the best course of action,” PIDGE flies closer and floats in front of his face. If she weren't a pod, it would be almost as if she was trying to reassure him. “All other eventualities would have resulted in your death-”

“Shut up!” Keith sits back down. He buries his face in his hands. He's sick of this. Sick of fighting, sick of robots, sick of Shiro doing the exact same thing over and over again just so Keith can end up alone and miserable and alive. “Just... I don't want to hear it right now.”

A moment of silence. They're only pods, but Keith feels bad for yelling. Then:

“...Suggestion;” PIDGE says carefully, “While we wait, maybe you could send a pod to look for groundside assistance?”

“...Fine.” Keith looks at MATT, who flinches a bit with intimidation. “You know of any squadrons nearby?”

“My local scanners are picking up the signals of several android black boxes in the vicinity.”

“Couldn't they have assisted with the fight?”

“I had no way of detecting them with enemy jamming equipment active, and I am unable to connect any pod units with them, which would render me incapable of contacting them with radio waves.”

“Of course.” He huffs bitterly. Shiro still isn't repairing, his arm stump is still bleeding heavily. He's never seen an android bleed to death, but if Shiro wakes up like that he's going to be in an unimaginable amount of pain, and he's probably going to freak out. Above him, the fire is still burning within the Goliath’s chest. Metal doesn't catch fire easily, so it's unlikely to spread far, but if the thing starts falling apart while they're still up here then they'd fall into the sea. Waiting for air support to arrive is definitely not an option.

“MATT, go find help. Tell them of our situation, and get them to bring transport for wounded asap.”

“Understood.”

-


End file.
